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Food in political cartoons: depicting society. Main themes and evolution

Since our early days on this beautiful blue planet, we have been concerned with representing our world, as a form of understanding it better or simply archiving knowledge. There is no need to cite clichés that size a picture’s worth, suffice to say images are powerful. They can transcend language barriers and be filled with meaning and codes. It is only natural that food has taken a significant spot in our representations of the surrounding world. Narrowing the scope, I will have a look at food in political cartoons. I have chosen this particular form of expression because I find it a true radiography of society, a witty account of times passed, a lens through which we can look back and forward, too. Furthermore, I enjoy the satire, humor and wits cartoonist propose.

One can draw a straight line from caricatures to cartoons and, I argue later on, to comics and memes. I believe the terms -caricature and cartoon- do overlap, the semantic border becoming fuzzy. The word caricature comes from Italian (caricare) which means exaggerating. First and foremost, the caricatures were portraits expressing exaggerated features of the subject: a prominent belly, a big nose, a missing tooth. This effect is incorporated in cartoons, from a tiny Napoleon to a big-eared Obama. As a reference, it is argued that a cartoon is composed of two elements:caricature, which parodies the individual, and allusion, which creates the context into which the individual is placed. How can we define political cartoons? This is where the Oxford dictionary comes to help: “A simple drawing showing the features of its subjects in a humorously exaggerated way, especially a satirical one in a newspaper or magazine.” While today the connection with the written media is clear, it was not always like this. Early caricatures were sold independently and not put on display within the home: they were a rather rude form of art. Keeping the timeline, I will assert that the political cartoon starts with W. Hogwarth in the 17th century, in England. This peculiar art form continues to develop with the French revolution and during the 19th century. The earliest cartoons were simply images, with no words attached, as to appeal to a larger public. As they became more sophisticated, words were also added. I will pause here and propose another perspective, the connection between political cartoons and censorship. England had more permissive laws regarding censorship, which allowed the apparition and development of the political cartoon. The same happened in France, during and after the revolution, yet, with notable fluctuations. I have experienced this first hand, with the fall of communism, in my native country, Romania. Of course, there was an abundance of humorous illustrations during the regime, mainly referencing the human weakness, for example, the cheating wife or the lazy worker. There were a few daring ones, alluding to scarcity of utilities and food or to the crowded public transport, an indirect hit at the regime. Yet, the true political cartoon flourished after the revolution, the first almanach called “A reportage from hell” (A. Andronic) appearing in 1990. This grocery store is selling hooks for hanging salami, scales for sausages, wrapping paper for ham, knives for cutting cheese and string for tying sirloin. Even as a kid, I was drawn to this imagistic and I found it fascinating. I have looked at hundreds of caricatures and cartoons and I still follow some contemporary cartoonists. Food is a recurrent element that serves as an instrument of depiction.

When we’re talking about politics, food seems one of the most unrelated and un-alluring areas to draw inspiration from. Clearly, I am not referring to cartoons about food politics, but to the usage of food stuff as an instrument of expression in political cartoons. This research has taken me from the early 18th century to the present; my observation is that caricaturists and cartoonists often include food in their work. The obvious question is, of course, why? Why use food elements in political cartoons, especially with no direct implication or connection between them? It is my belief that the main reason is the fact that food is extremely relatable. We all consume food, we all understand what this is about. We all recognize the simple actions associated with food, eating or cooking: slicing and dicing, sharing a dish, chewing, frying or roasting, serving oneself or others. We all have some loose generally accepted concepts about desirable or repugnant foods, foods that are associated with opulence or poverty, foods that are traditionally consumed in different parts of the world. We all understand the attitudes associated with eating: gluttony, greediness, hunger, craving, fulfillment. Some of these are culturally driven and can differ greatly in meaning, yet I think it’s safe to say the basics are common across cultures. Furthermore, let’s not forget that until rather recently, the only medium for publishing cartoons was represented by physical newspapers or magazines, addressing rather local or delimited communities. (Written) news didn’t travel that fast in those days.
T.Husband, the editor of “The 20th Century in cartoons. A history in pictures”, stated in his introduction that “it is the cartoonist gift to simplify“, a statement that I only partially agree with. Cartoons are extremely condensed, with lots of cues, contextual meaning and one or more characters. They are highly complex, even when they look simple. I think this is what Mr. Husband was referring to: cartoonists take a multitude of elements, ideas, situations and they synthesize all this, through the lens of their personal opinion, in what comes out as a simple picture. Yet, synthesis is not simplification; this is why I only agree with Mr. Husband from an artistic perspective, and not from a conceptual one. Within the complex, mingled conceptual structure of a cartoon, food is the simple cue, the one we instantly get. Let’s take this example of a cartoon showing Napoleon as a boulanger, taking out of the oven the fresh, warm new kings figurines, after the Presbourg treaty. We don’t need to pause and think about the act of taking stuff out of the hot oven and the pre-consequent baking process. We know what this means: he is the one who has “cooked” the goods, the architect of the whole thing. What we need to focus on is the context, the allusion, the subtext. Our brains can process visual information within milliseconds; visual perception relies on a top-down processing mechanism. Appealing to past experience, information we accumulated and stored, we are able to make sense of visual information by making calculated assumptions (R.L. Gregory). Hence, integrating visual cues that immediately find their path to common, easily accessible, stored knowledge is an important element, especially given the very complex conceptual structure of cartoons.

There are many ways cartoonists integrate food-related elements in their work. As mentioned above, they rely on simple actions, stereotypes, attitudes and behaviors.

There’s the slicing and sharing, the division of food. We mostly share food with closed ones, the people we care about. There’s intimacy in sharing food; there’s a hedonistic component, but also one strictly linked to survival. In cartoons, the concept brings forward powerful characters dividing important goods between themselves. Food itself is not explicitly shown, but represented by something of value that is shared. There is also the implication of keeping the goods just for the present ones; the division is done only between the powerful. Consequently, the rest gets nothing. One of the first cartoons that comes to mind is the famous Gillray “The plumb pudding in danger- State Epicures taking un Petit Souper”. It is showing Napoleon and William Pitt The Younger dividing the world, represented as a center piece dish for the “state epicures”. Pitt is taking a part of the oceans, as a referral to the great British fleet; Napoleon on his side, it slicing down with his sword a piece of Europe. The meal is divided between the two “friends”: “The world is big enough so that our two nations can live there”. A modern cartoon picks up the same idea, showing the leaders of some African and European countries at the table, cutlery in hand, ready to divide Somalia, depicted as a big, juicy steak. Another example depicting division of food between characters shows King George, dressed as an old woman, the Queen, and the Prince of Wales sharing a meal of gold coins. The gate of the treasury is open in the background.

One more facette cartoonists use is the effect of food on the human body, by means of associating different personal characteristics with the appearance of the character depicted. For example, Boss Tweed is always shown abnormally large in cartoons, even though he was not that corpulent in reality. George IV is portrayed by Gillray in his pavilion after an exquisite, copious dinner: he is leaning back in his chair, huge belly full-front and picks his teeth after what we understand to have been a heavy feast. The cartoon stands as a critique of the lavished life-style of the monarch. The same Gillray depicts John Bull, the personification of England, extremely obese, devouring French ships, which are brought to him by admirals wearing aprons. Exaggeration, hyperbola, caricature! The fat man is most of the times associated with gluttony, avarice, wealth (usually acquired through shady business). On the contrary, the extremely thin character is associated with poverty & hardship. One modern cartoon that captures the idea shows the people feeding the government. The opposition is portrayed by Gillray, who puts face to face the fat English man complaining about taxes and morbidly thin French man praising his liberty.

One favorite bit of cartoonists, old and new, is playing with stereotypes. The term “stereotype” was first introduced by the sports journalist A. Lippmann as “a picture in our heads”. Even though they receive lots of backlash and mostly negative connotations, stereotypes are nothing more than classifiers, shortcuts, helping our brains understand and juggle with the huge amount of information they’re exposed to. Stereotypes are, eventually, an adaptation mechanism, without which our brains would not cope. There are negative and positive stereotypes, both can be true (statistically proven) or false (perceptually driven). Naturally, cartoonists are attracted towards negative stereotypes, which they load with satire and sometimes humor.
As of the early 19th century, one of the most common racial stereotypes illustrates black people’s love for watermelon. They are depicted as having a great appetite for watermelon, implying that black people (mainly slaves, at that time) can be happy with very little. A very convenient subtle cue. While there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a piece of watermelon, the stereotype is demeaning and infantilizing this segment of the population, not only by the context, but by the way the characters are caricatured. There were many postcards and cartoons on this topic, one of them going as far as identifying black people with this fruit, in some sort of bizarre transformation. It seems that the watermelon stereotype is not grounded in reality, with less than 12% of modern black Americans testifying their love for the red, juicy fruit. Yet, the imagistic has survived to present times, as a cartoonist from the Boston Herald proved recently, with a controversial cartoon about president Obama. The Chinese were also a different ethnic group, hence a target for political cartoonists. The common acceptation was that the Chinese were “stealing” the Americans’ livelihood; the idea was put on paper by showing a malicious Chinese person literally trying to steal the food from the dinner table of a typical American family, with America herself holding the food platter.

Racial stereotypes are not the only ones cartoonists bring forward. There are quite a few national stereotypes cartoons that popped-out during my research. One classical cartoon from the early 19th century is showing Napoleon during a peculiar feast: the table is full of delicacies, representing various countries. Napoleon ignores the Swiss Cheese, the Turkey, the Dutch Herrings, the Naples Biscuit or the Polish Goose, and has his eyes set on the juicy “English Roast Beef”. He’s ready, sword in hand, to carve a piece; the small man has a big appetite. The same idea is later picked up in Punch magazine, in a cartoon showing Hitler at the center of the table enjoying all Europe’s finest produce: French wine, Norwegian salmon or Romanian boar.We all know the drill: Italians love pasta, the French are sometimes called “Frogs”, Irish like their booze and potatoes and so on. While these stereotypes are rather benign and can bring a smile or at least a smirk, they (can) have a heavy meaning behind. The “drunk Irish” cartoon was extremely popular in the US, as a reaction to the influx of immigrants the country was seeing. There were also cartoons depicting Irish in rags, eating potatoes, as a reference to the Potato Famine that drove them to more plentiful lands. When it comes to food, the French are known for their great love of French cuisine and disdain for pretty much anything else, which sometimes translates into snobbery. This recent cartoon from the New Yorker captures the mood and the irony. Another modern cartoon by A. Davey is showing French president J. Chirac being rather disgusted by the typical american fast-food, offered to him by “Uncle Dubya” (G.W. Bush). The cartoon has a double meaning: the snobbish, fancy French raising the eyebrow in disgust at the American food and President Chirac not being impressed with the friendly offer of their American allies.

Food can correlate with class and wealth, even though the two concepts are not necessarily related. As we’ve seen already, the potato- the most humble vegetable- is associated with poverty. Other food items are, on the contrary, associated with wealth: caviar, champagne, foie gras, oysters. Put any of these foods in front of a cartoon character and the message is clear: this person belongs to the rich/ upper class. Showing the flaws of this upper class is a topic dear to cartoonists. Meat is, par excellence, the appanage of the rich. The poor were only able to afford meat few times a month, this cartoon captures the chagrin of the poor man faced with the British butcher, surrounded by good-looking chunks of meat. The butcher is wearing an uniform, hinting at his connection with the ruling powers, while the poor is in rags. The poverty of the common people is the theme bothering the cartoonist.
Turtle soup used to be the epiphany of exquisite, expensive food in the 19th century England, a status symbol for the rich. Turtle, the main ingredient, was very difficult to obtain, scarcity driving prices up. Owning a turtle shell was highly desirable among the nouveaux riches, while the old aristocrats were serving turtle on normal plates, legitimizing their status: they didn’t need the shell to prove their true high society souche. C. Keene is showing the divide: when presented with a choice of turtle, the farmer declines saying he can always have broth at home. Clearly, the farmer, member of the lower class, doesn’t comprehend what the turtle stands for. Same author captures the dinner conversation between two gentlemen: the host makes it clear how expensive the salmon is, expecting some sort of praise or awe from the guest, who ignores the remark and helps himself to another piece of fish. Food and decor paint the picture of the decaying society, parvenitism and faulty moeurs. The wife needs to pull back her belligerent husband, who is offended by the “rude” waiter. She reminds him that they’re not “poor class” anymore and this behavior is unacceptable in a fancy restaurant like the one they’re in.

I would also like to highlight the personification of food by means of referencing various political characters or situations. I wrote about how I imagine certain vegetables with human traits and it seems I’m not alone. Conferring human characteristics to certain foods works as a mechanism of association. Bread and potatoes are staples, basics, common ingredients that can guarantee survival. This anonymous cartoon was published in the Punch, in 1847 and celebrates the low prices of the two staples: the British bread and the Irish potato. They are both portrayed as cheerful characters, exchanging pleasanteries and complimenting each other. It seems that the editors of the magazine jumped the gun too fast, the the great famine continued and the recovery was not real. Speaking of the Irish potato, this Punch cartoon called “The real potato blight of Ireland” from 1845 portrays Daniel O’Connell, the Emancipator and a great Catholic supporter as the real pitfall responsible for the country’s condition. Another food personification puts face to face the carrot and the potato, referring to the Paris Siege of December 1870. After the disastrous defeat of the French at Sedan and the capture of Napoleon III, the Prussians surrounded Paris on 9 September 1870. Famine was rampid in the city, food prices went up and some items like onions, carrots or squash were almost impossible to find. The carrot, a younger, fancier lady meets the potato, an older, scruffier one in the streets of Paris. There is irony in this cartoon, as food is very hard to come by in the occupied Paris: both fancy carrots and plain potatoes were not likely to meet in the street during those days. But perhaps the most famous caricature that merges human traits with food elements is the metamorphosis of king Louis-Philippe. We’re not necessarily looking at personification of food per se, but rather at a depersonalization and fruitification. Les poires (The pears), by H. Daumier, appeared in 1831 in the journal “La Caricature”, as a personal hit to the king. It seems that the crowned head of the French king did, indeed, resemble the shape of a pear. Furthermore, there’s also a play on words: the pear is a fruit, but it also signifies an imbecile. The success of this caricature was grand, the city of Paris became full of pear drawings and maquettes, as symbols of the Republicans’ fight against the monarchy. The abundance of pears all over Paris and France triggered new legislation banning all personal attacks or negative reference to the king and apparatus.

Finally, I should point out that there are many times when food doesn’t take any hidden meanings, doesn’t stand for something in particular and it is just that: food, as simply food. For example, this cartoon showing the signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the Savoy. The food looks a bit thorny and dangerous, yet the focus is on the characters and decor. The German delegation is welcomed by Clemeanceu: the chairs are full of spikes and there are handcuffs on the table. Gillray shows the queen, grossly caricatured, preparing the royal dinner: frying sprats. The sprats might be a wink towards British preference for fish, but again they are not the focal point- the queen is.

This Punch cartoon shows a high society dinner, with the required house-staff present. Maybe hearing something from the conversation, the maid bursts into laugh and drops the food from the bawl she was carrying. The guests are flabbergasted, as this kind of transgression was absolutely unacceptable. As in a fit of embarrassment, the last screenshot shows the guests staring at their plates and the maid totally composed. The maid is but human, however, the social norms dictate overlooking the event: nothing should perturb the dinner party. Food here serves its basic purpose, as just food.
This article has mainly discussed 18th and 19th century cartoons; they are more charming, compelling and artistic. Moreover, we can look at them quite detached, as most of the issues don’t impact our world today. Following the same direction, a brief investigation of present times would make for an interesting closing note. There are many political events shaping our world today, some of the most gruesome, perplexing and almost-dystopian things are going on. Loads of material for cartoonists. It seems that in the dawn of the US election, much of the focus was given to the candidates’ diets and food preferences. It is not the purpose of this article to emit any kind of judgement or take any position towards either of the the two candidates. However, I cannot help but wonder how are personal food preferences relevant to the presidential function. The current president is known to be keen on well-done meatloaf and vanilla icecream. Well-done meat resonates with a low level of gastronomical achievement, vanilla icecream simply reads old (or traditional). Cartoonists show Trump as a big-fast food lover, correlating this with the (at that time potential) faulty food policies he might implement if chosen. The strongest reference related to Hilary Clinton is, without doubt, her self-proclaimed love for hot chilies. Hot chilies read fun, adventurous, even cool. There’s also an ethnic appeal component which did not escape cartoonists. Needless to say, Hilary Clinton was the media’s sweetheart and there are fewer negative cartoons and caricatures of her than of her opponent. What happened we have all seen and it seems the good food choice versus the bad one didn’t necessarily have any impact on the outcome. This is, of course, a much simplified discourse, looking at the entire event solely through the gastronomical lens. There is a myriad of other elements that have contributed to the outcome.

While we might believe our world today is much more progressive than the 18th or 19th century, let’s not forget cartoonists still face constrains and even censorship. This cartoon was banned from Farm News, an Iowa farming magazine. Mr. R. Friday was fired from his job as a cartoonist after 21 years for daring to offend the big agri-business and take the side of small farmers. Some of the agri-bosses did not take the irony and the blunt facts lightly and pulled their advertising deal with the magazine, this resulting into the brute firing of Mr. Friday. It seems to me we need cartoonists today just as much as two centuries ago, if not more.